


by the light of day

by starlight_sugar



Category: Greater Boston (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wedding Planner, F/F, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 02:24:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16965939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_sugar/pseuds/starlight_sugar
Summary: She reaches into her purse and pulls out a manila envelope. “I work for Bespin Bridal, and Emily Bespin is scamming people.”





	by the light of day

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of the AUcember series, a self-made challenge where I try to write a new AU one-shot every day. This was originally posted on Tumblr on December 2nd and is being cross-posted upon request. You can read all of the AUcember fics in the collection linked above.
> 
> With thanks to Tam, who had some really incredible wedding sabotage ideas.

Louisa crosses her ankles and glances around the coffee shop. It’s the same crowd as it was a minute ago, the last time she looked: a couple of old ladies with newspapers, some students on their laptops, a guy in a suit, and her.

She checks her watch. She’s trying not to be impatient, she really is, but she only has so much time to dedicate to mysterious cloak-and-dagger meetings. And this is pushing the upper limit of the time she has available, which is a damn shame, because she’d like to investigate this mystery email.

Her phone buzzes, and she glances at it. It’s a text from Gemma:  _anything??_

Louisa frowns and takes a drink of her latte. She uses her free hand to poke at her phone and type back  _nothing yet._

Gemma replies with a frowny face, which isn’t especially helpful. Louisa rolls her eyes and takes another sip of her coffee, which is when the other woman pulls back the chair across from Louisa and takes a seat, looking at her expectantly.

Louisa freezes and slowly lowers her coffee to the table. “Uh… hi?”

The other woman blinks, like she wasn’t expecting Louisa to say hi. She looks tired - no, not just tired but haggard. Like she’s been sleeping fine, it’s being awake that’s a problem. But not even that can detract from the fact that she’s pretty: big eyes, full lips, neatly-manicured short nails. She looks professional and put-together. And twitchy.

“Hi,” the other woman says at last. “Louisa Alvarez?”

“That’s me.” Louisa looks her up and down. “You’re the one who emailed me?”

“I am.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a manila envelope. “I work for Bespin Bridal, and Emily Bespin is scamming people.”

“Scamming people,” Louisa repeats. “What’s your name?”

The woman shrinks back. “I don’t think I should tell you.”

“Oh, come on, what am I going to do with your name?”

“You could report me to Ms. Bespin!”

“You think I’m on speaking terms with her?”

“You photographed her wedding,” the other woman points out. Louisa blinks, startled. That’s completely public information; the photos are up on her website, and they’re not exactly hard to find. Emily Bespin is not one for subtlety when it comes for sharing photos online. But it’s still not the kind of thing most people would know. “How do I know you’re not friends?”

Louisa leans back in her chair. “I take it you googled me?”

The other woman nods. She still looks a little cagey, fingers fluttering on the table of the coffee shop. Which is extra suspicious, because Louisa had time to take a good look at that table, and there’s definitely something sticky on it. The woman doesn’t even seem to mind.

“Well,” Louisa says, “when you searched me, how many other times did my name come up in association with Bespin Bridal?”

She frowns. “None.”

“Exactly.”

Bespin Bridal is something of a juggernaut in the wedding industry. Louisa’s been in the thick of that for a while, photographing weddings first to make money to get through undergrad and then as a profession. She’s done some weird weddings, but Emily Bespin’s was one of the weirdest of all. The lady shut down a whole train platform for her wedding. And she was a beast and a half to work with. Louisa never liked the word bridezilla, but Emily is as close as she’s ever come to working with one.

When she’d found out, a couple months later, that Emily was running a wedding planning business, she’d decided to steer clear. She’s given Bespin a wide berth ever since. They pay well, according to her other friends in the industry, florists and caterers and other photographers who have buddied up with her. But the whole thing always seemed suspicious to Louisa. Anyone with a 100% picture-perfect record is hiding something.

She hadn’t been surprised to receive the first email from an anonymous source claiming that Bespin was up to something fishy. Or, well, she’d been surprised that someone was emailing her, but not about the fishiness. She’d agreed to meet with the source more out of curiosity than any actual intent to do something. Which brings her back to the pretty, nervous woman in front of her, sitting with one hand resting on the manila envelope between them and one leg jiggling nervously.

“I don’t work with Bespin,” Louisa says. “At all. I was assuming you knew that. I thought it might’ve even been why you contacted me.”

“I knew you were less connected than a lot of people,” the woman admits. “But I didn’t realize- never? Isn’t that hard, in the Boston wedding scene?”

“Getting harder every day,” Louisa mutters. Bespin went from an independent planner to a network practically overnight. A lot of people in the wedding industry have been suckered into some kind of exclusivity contract with Bespin, and Louisa is seeing less and less of them. It is, to say the least, a little alarming. “But I’m sticking to my guns on this one.”

“Good.” She slides the envelope across the table. “This is what I could sneak out today. It’s the documents from one wedding. The ceremony happened a month ago. You can see the inconsistencies right away.”

Louisa frowns as she opens the envelope. “Inconsistencies?”

“Financials. How much the bride and groom paid for flowers versus how much the florist charged Emily.”

“I don’t know, it seems pretty normal to me for a wedding planner to-” Louisa stops as she takes in the numbers. “Whoa.”

“Exactly,” the woman says grimly.

“This can’t be right.” Louisa flips to the next page, running her finger down the catering estimates, comparing to the actual guest count that the bride and groom had provided. “These numbers are insanely off.”

“Too far to be an accident.”

“She’s upcharging them more than fifty percent,” Louisa says incredulously. “This can’t possibly be legal.”

“It’s not.”

“So you want to blow the whistle on Bespin.”

She sighs. “It’s not that simple. A lot of people are contractually bound to BB right now, good people who will be sunk if all of this comes out without context. We need to figure out how to release this information in a way that clearly shows that Emily is the one doing this.”

“What part of this isn’t clear?”

“We can’t risk it,” the woman says firmly. “There are a lot of people who rely on BB for their income and their reputation. We’re not going to put them on the line. We can’t.”

“But-”

“We  _can’t_ , Louisa.”

Louisa pauses. For all that this woman is trying to bring Bespin’s fraud to light, she still works for them. Her livelihood is on the line here too.

Carefully, she sets the papers back on the table. “Okay,” she says, and the woman relaxes minutely. “Okay. I don’t know what I’m doing here, so you’re going to have to help me out. But I know people who can help on my end, as long as you keep bringing me information. Is that something you’re comfortable with?”

The woman looks frightened for a second. “I- I don’t-”

“Hey.” Louisa reaches out impulsively and grabs the woman’s hand, where it’s resting on the table. The woman looks down at it in shock, her mouth forming a perfect O. “What you’re doing is a good thing, okay? If we need to do a good thing carefully, then we can do it carefully. But it’s only a good thing if you actually follow through, okay?”

She takes a deep breath, still staring down at their joined hands. “My name’s Nica.”

“Nica,” Louisa repeats. It’s a pretty name for a pretty woman, and she comes embarrassingly close to saying as much. Instead, she says, “Is that short for something?”

“It’s a nickname. And not one Emily uses.”

“Are you okay with me calling you Nica?”

“Yes,” Nica says quickly. “Yes, I am.”

“Okay, Nica.” Louisa swipes her thumb across the back of Nica’s hand and goes to pull back, but Nica squeezes her hand suddenly, clutching her close. It takes all of Louisa’s power not to let her surprise show. “I know that this is a big task I’m asking you to take on. And I know a thing or two about what Emily does to people who break contracts.”

Nica grimaces. “You’ve heard?”

“I’ve heard rumors,” Louisa says cautiously. “And we can discuss what’s true about the rumors another day, if you want to. Right now, I’m not going to ask you to do anything more than you’re comfortable with. But I am going to ask you to keep going with this.”

“This seemed a lot easier before I started,” Nica admits. She’s still clinging to Louisa’s hand, and carefully, Louisa squeezes her hand back. “But you’re right. I’ve been… I’ve been doing things that I know are unfair for a long time now. And I don’t want to anymore.”

Louisa smiles as encouragingly as possible. “Good! I’m glad you emailed me.” She pauses. “But… why did you pick me?”

Nica blinks. “What?”

“Well, even with Bespin taking over, there are a lot of indie people in the wedding scene. Hell, there are probably even people with fewer connections to Bespin than I have. So why am I your contact for this?”

“Because…” she frowns. “I don’t know. I saw your picture and I thought you seemed nice.”

Louisa laughs. She can’t help herself. Nica looks stung, so she lifts her free hand to gesture frantically. “No, no, I’m not laughing at you! That’s just one of the nicest things anyone has ever just… randomly said about me.”

“Oh.” Nica’s cheeks darken visibly. It’s a nice look on her. “You’re… welcome?”

“Thank you,” she laughs. “And thank you for coming to me with this. I promise we’re going to do something to fix this, okay?”

“Okay,” Nica breathes out. She looks down at their joined hands again and startles, letting Louisa’s hand go in the process. “Oh, my god, I’m so sorry, I’ve been so out of it lately, I didn’t-”

“Nica,” Louisa says warmly. “It’s fine.”

“Good!” Nica takes a deep breath and nods. “Good. I, uh… I have to get back to work. You can keep the envelope. I’ll email you again.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Louisa answers, and Nica gives her a bright-eyed smile as she pushes her chair back. “Be safe at work, okay?”

Nica snorts. “It’s Emily Bespin, not a lion’s den.”

“Is there a difference?”

Nica tilts her head thoughtfully. “Maybe,” she says, and vanishes out of the coffee shop before she can elaborate.

Louisa lifts the papers again to rifle through them, but before she can, her phone buzzes. Gemma again, with a predictable amount of patience:  _what about now??_

She sets the papers down and lifts her hand. It’s still warm from Nica’s body heat, and it’s kind of pleasant, honestly. Like Nica is still there. She grins as she taps out a new text to Gemma.

_Source showed up with dirt. You ready to dig?_

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr and Twitter @waveridden!


End file.
